WESTERN CENTER FOR JOURNALISM v. I.R.S.

The opinion of the court was delivered by: Kollar-kotelly, District Judge.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

In this case, Plaintiff challenges the adequacy and
reasonableness of a series of searches that Defendant conducted
pursuant to Plaintiff's request for documents under the Freedom
of Information Act ("FOIA"), 5 U.S.C. § 552. Pending before the
Court are Defendant's two motions for summary judgment,
Defendant's motion to strike certain of Plaintiff's declarations,
and Plaintiff's motion for leave to supplement its opposition to
Defendant's first motion for summary judgment. In addition, each
of these motions has precipitated oppositions and reply briefs.
Because the Court finds that Defendant conducted a series of
adequate searches that were reasonably calculated to uncover the
requested documents, it shall grant Defendant's first motion for
partial summary judgment, and its second motion for summary
judgment. Moreover, the Court shall deny Defendant's motion to
strike as moot, and shall grant Plaintiff's motion for leave to
supplement, noting Defendant's objections thereto.

II. BACKGROUND

A. Administrative Proceedings

In July of 1997, Plaintiff Western Center for Journalism, a
non-profit, tax exempt corporation, submitted a FOIA request to
the Internal Revenue Service ("the Service") Disclosure Office in
the Northern California District seeking access to 1994 and 1995
tax audit and examination documents. After conducting an audit of
Plaintiff's tax-exempt status in 1996, the Service compiled and
stored the materials both in the Los Angeles Service Center and
in a large storage file in San Francisco. See Compl., Ex. 1.
Shortly before the audit, Plaintiff had sponsored and published
an investigation into the death of Deputy White House Counsel
Vince Foster. See Pl.'s Opp. to Summ. J. at 1. Based on this
investigation, Plaintiff asserted that the tax audit was
politically inspired and was intentionally held to "severely
curtail the Center's ability to exercise its First Amendment
rights and [to] damage the organization." Id.

Within 10 days of receiving the request, the Service's
Disclosure Specialist in the Los Angeles District Office, Ms.
Hale, responded by conducting a search of the Integrated Data
Retrieval System (IDRS), which is a mainframe database of all
taxpayers' tax accounts maintained by the Service. See Hale
Decl. ¶ 5. After finding Plaintiff's tax files in the IDRS, she
placed an order with the Los Angeles Service Center, the
repository for all of the closed tax accounts. Upon review of the
files she received from the Service Center, Ms. Hale noted that
two of the 114 pages found contained material to which FOIA
exemption 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(5) potentially applied. Id. ¶ 6 She
proceeded by redacting the information on the two pages that
contained the exempted material, and released the segregable
portions of the two pages along with the remaining 112 pages in
full.

For these reasons, the Service established that each document
requested was either produced, unidentifiable, or wholly
exempted. See National Cable Television Ass'n v. Federal
Communications Comm'n, 479 F.2d 183, 186 (D.C.Cir. 1973). The
Service turned over all documents that were responsive to
Plaintiff's request. When it came to the Service's attention that
additional responsive documents existed, the Service explained
why these had been unidentifiable, due to the two different case
files stored in two different cities. In addition, the Service
explained that it had released the segregable portions to the
Plaintiff. Thus, the Service demonstrated that its search for
documents was reasonable.

The Service's affidavits demonstrate that it properly withheld
documents that fall within well-established FOIA Exemption 3,
which protects from disclosure information that is

[s]pecifically exempted from disclosure by statute
(other than section 552(b) of this title), provided
that such statute (A) requires that the matters be
withheld from the public in such a manner as to leave
no discretion on the issue, or (B) established
particular criteria for withholding or refers to
particular types of matters to be withheld.

a taxpayer's identity, the nature, source, or amount
of his income, payments, receipts, deductions,
exemptions, credits, assets, liabilities, net worth,
tax liability, tax withheld, deficiencies,
overassessments, or tax payments, whether the
taxpayer's return was, or is being examined, or
subject to other investigation or processing, or any
other data, received by, recorded by, prepared by,
furnished to, or collected by the Secretary with
respect to a return or with respect to the
determination of the existence, or possible existence
of liability (or the amount thereof) of any person
under this title for any tax, penalty, interest,
fine, forfeiture, or other imposition or offense.

26 U.S.C. § 6103(b)(2)(A).

Because Section 6103's prohibitions apply here, the Service may
not release to the public a third party's tax return information.
See 26 U.S.C. § 6103(a). According to the Frosch declaration,
for example, the information redacted from page 010 includes the
names, tax identification numbers, tax years under investigation,
and other tax data of taxpayers other than the plaintiff. See
Frosch Decl. ¶ 6. Thus, the Service properly invoked Exemption 3
in conjunction with 26 U.S.C. § 6103(b)(2)(A) to protect the
identity of third party taxpayers. Id.*fn2

To evaluate the propriety of an Exemption 7(C) withholding, the
Court must balance the privacy interests involved against the
public interest in disclosure. See SafeCard Servs., Inc., at
1205; United States Dep't of Justice v. Reporters Comm. for
Freedom of the Press, 489 U.S. 749, 762, 109 S.Ct. 1468, 103
L.Ed.2d 774 (1989). Under this calculus, "the only public
interest relevant for purposes of Exemption 7(C) is one that
focuses on `the citizens' right to be informed about what their
government is up to.'" Davis v. Dep't of Justice,
968 F.2d 1276, 1282 (D.C.Cir. 1992) (quoting Reporters Committee, 489
U.S. at 773, 109 S.Ct. 1468). In this instance, the private
interest to protect persons from possible harm that may result in
the release of particular information clearly outweighs the
public interest in gaining access to this information. See
SafeCard, 926 F.2d at 1206.

In the case at hand, the Plaintiff requested its own
administrative file that the Service had compiled while
investigating and inquiring into the Plaintiff's failure to file
certain forms, and into Plaintiff's tax-exempt status. See
Grisso Decl. ¶¶ 2, 3. These materials are defined as "records or
information compiled for law enforcement purposes." In addition,
two redacted pages contain the address of a complainant against
the Plaintiff and unrelated, incidental medical information about
a third party. The Service has properly withheld portions of
these documents that were compiled for law enforcement purposes
as mandated under FOIA Exemption 7(c) because the authorization
of their release could cause harm to the complainant.
Accordingly, Plaintiff's contention of bad faith is
unsubstantiated, and lacks validity.

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